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slots between professional lawn darts and reruns of Australian-rules football, turkey bowling was a completely clandestine sport, relegated to the dark athletic basement of mailbox baseball and cow tipping. Despite this lack of official recognition, the fine and noble tradition of "skidding the buzzard" is practiced nightly by supermarket night crews all over the nation.
    Clint was the official pinsetter for the Animals. Since there was always wagering, Clint's religion forbade his playing, but his participation, in some part, was required to ensure that he would not squeal to the management. He set ten-quart bottles of Ivory liquid in a triangle pattern at the end of the produce aisle. The meat case would act as a backstop.
    The rest of the crew, having chosen their birds from the freezer case, were lined up at the far end of the aisle.
    "You're up, Tom," Simon said. "Let's see what you got."
    Tommy stepped forward and weighed the frozen turkey in his right hand-felt its frigid power singing against skin.
    Strangely, the theme from Chariots of Fire began playing in his head.
    He squinted and picked his target, then took his steps and sent the bird sliding down the aisle. A collective gasp rose from the crew as the fourteen-pound, self-basting, fresh-frozen projectile of wholesome savory goodness plowed into the soap bottles like a freight train into a chorus line of drunken grandmothers.
    "Strike!" Clint shouted.
    Simon winced.
    Troy Lee said, "Nobody's that good. Nobody."
    "Luck," Simon said.
    Tommy suppressed a smile and stepped back from the line.
    "Who's up?"
    Simon stepped up and stared down the aisle, watching Clint set up the pins. A nervous tick jittered under his left eye.
    Strangely, the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly began playing in his head.
    The turkey was heavy in his hand. He could almost feel the giblets pulsing with tension – the Butterball version of the Tell-Tale Heart. He strode to the line, swinging the turkey back in a wide arc, then forward with an explosive yell. The turkey rocketed, airborne, three quarters of the way down the aisle before touching down and slamming through the soap bottles and into the base of the meat case, smashing metal and severing wires in a shower of sparks and smoke.
    The store lights flickered and went out. The huge compressors that ran the store's refrigeration wound down like dying airliners. The smell of ozone and burned insulation filled the air. A moment of dark silence – the Animals stood motionless, sweating, as if waiting for the deadly sound of an approaching U-boat. Battery back-up modules switched on safety lights at the end of each aisle. The crew looked from Simon, who stood at the line with his mouth hanging open, to the turkey, sticking, blackened and burned, in the side of the meat case like an unexploded artillery shell.
    They checked their watches: exactly six hours and forty-eight minutes to exact repairs and stock the shelves before the manager came in to open the store.
    "Break time!" Tommy announced.
    They sat on a row of grocery carts outside the store, their backs against the wall, smoking, eating, and, in the case of Simon, telling lies.
    "This is nothing," Simon said. "When I was working a store in Idaho, we ran a forklift through the dairy case. Two hundred gallons of milk on the floor. Sucked it up in the Shop-Vac and had it back in the cartons ten minutes before opening and no one knew the difference."
    Tommy was sitting next to Troy Lee, trying to get up the courage to ask a favor. For the first time since arriving in San Francisco, he felt as if he fit in somewhere and he didn't want to push his luck. Still, this was his crew now, even if he had padded his application a bit to get the job.
    Tommy decided to dive in. "Troy, no offense, but do you speak Chinese?"
    "Two dialects," Troy said around a mouthful of corn chips. "Why?"
    "Well, I'm living in Chinatown. I kinda share a place with these five Chinese guys. No offense."
    Troy